9-11 Investigation: key facts and assumptions about the 9-11 tragedy are systematically dismantled and proven false by retired theologician and active book writer Prof. David Ray Griffin. His documentary video - 9-11: Myth Or Reality? has some valuable insight everyone with an open mind should confront itself with.
David Ray Griffin, is a retired Philosophy and Theology professor who has spent considerable time studying, analyzing and reviewing the facts and information that did not make to the front page of most world newspapers in the aftermatch of the 9-11 tragedy.
Recently, Prof. Griffin recorded two of his public presentations that he gave in San Francisco and Oakland in March and April of this year. Out of these recordings came the release of a full-length video documentary entitled: 9/11 - The Myth and The Reality, which can be freely viewed online in its entirety (1hr 38′).
In the full-featured video, Prof. Griffin details nine of the most commonly held myths and misconceptions about the events surrounding 9/11, and with microscopic precision addresses and dismantles each of the fallacies on which each one of those myths was painstakingly built.
In this unique video report I have decided to assemble here, I have extracted from the full-length video documentary, the nine short sections in which Prof. Griffin methodically dismantles by way of clear and fact-supported logic, the key foundations that keep together the mainstream story most of us still believe today.
This is man of gentle manners and having a relaxed, detached attitude. Prof. Griffin is not the typical conspiracy theorist. He is not a screamer, nor a counter-revolutionary communist. At the most superficial level Prof. Griffin really looks like a grand-fatherly figure, that inspires trust and that serves thoughtful insight gained on the battleground. As a scholar of the religious and the supernatural, he has trained himself not to get too emotional or patriotic and not to claim the direct guilt of anyone in first person. He rather unleashes a huge and unequivocable stream of logic, facts and public reports that once pulled together in the proper order, provide a visible evidence for information that was under everyone’s eyes throughout this time.
In this showcase, my newsroom has worked to bring to you nine short videos extracted from Dr. Griffin full-length video documentary as well as the full and complete English text transcription of them.
Myth # 1: “Our political and military leaders simply would not do such a thing”
This idea is widely believed, but is undermined by much evidence. The United States like many other countries has often used deceit to begin wars. For example, the American-Mexican war, with its false claim that “Mexico had shed American blood on American soil.”
The Spanish-American war with its “Remember the main incident”.
The war in the Philippines, with its false claim that the Philippinos fired the first shot.
And the Vietnam war, with its “Golf of Tunkan” hoax.
U.S government has also sometimes organized false flagged terrorist attacks, killing innocent civilians, then blaming the attacks on an enemy country or group often by planning evidence. As Daniel Ganser has shown in his recent book, “NATO’s Secret Armies“, NATO, guided by the CIA and the Pentagon arranged many such attacks in Western European countries during the Cold War, in which hundreds of people were killed by bombs or hooded men with shotguns.
These attacks were successfully blamed on communists and other “leftists” to discredit them in the eyes of the voting public. Finally, if it be thought that U.S military would not orchestrate such attacks against American citizens, one would only need to read the plans named as “Operation Northwoods” which the Joint Chief of Staff worked out in 1962 shortly after Fidel Castro had overthrown the pro-American dictator Batista.
This plan contained various pretexts which would provide justification for U.S military intervention in Cuba. Some of them would have involved killing Americans, for example “I remember the main incident”, “we could blow up a U.S ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.”
At this point, some people, having seen evidence that U.S leaders would be morally capable of orchestrating 9/11, might avoid looking at the evidence by appeal to Myth # 2.
Myth # 2: “Our Political and Military leaders would have had no motive for orchestrating the 9/11 attacks”
This myth was reinforced by the 9/11 Commission while explaining that Al Qaeda had ample motives for carrying out the attacks. This report mentions no motives that U.S leaders might have had, but the alleged motives of Al Qaeda that had hated Americans and their freedoms is dwarfed by the motive held my many members of the Bush-Cheney administration, the dream of establishing a global “pax americana“, the first all inclusive empire in history.
This dream has been articulated by many neo-conservatives or neo-cons during the 1990s after the disintegration of the Soviet Union made this possible. It was first officially articulated in the defence planning guide of 1992 drafted by Paul Wolfowitz on behalf of then Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney. A document that has been called “A blueprint for permanent American global hegemony”, and Cheney’s “plan to rule the world”. Achieving this goal would require four things:
- One of these was getting control of the world’s oil especially in Central Asia and the Middle East. And the Bush administration came to power with the plans already made to attack Afghanistan and Iraq.
- The second requirement was a technological transformation of the military in which fighting from space would become essential.
- A third requirement was an enormous increase in the military spending to pay for these new wars and the weaponization of space.
- The fourth one was the remodeling of the doctrine of pre-emptive attack so that American would be able to attack other countries even if they presented no eminent threat.
These four elements would require a fifth, an event that would make the American people ready to accept these imperialistic policies. As Bruno Brzezinski explained in his 1997 book called “The Grand Chess Board“:
“The American people with their Democratic instincts are reluctant to authorize the money and human sacrifice as is necessary for ‘imperial mobilization,’ and this refusal limits America’s capacity for military intimidation.”
But this impediment could be overcome if there were “a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat”. Just as the American people were willing to enter WWII only after “the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor”.
The same idea was suggested in a 2000 document entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” which was put out by a neo-con think tank called “Project for the New American Century,” many members of which including Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz became central members of the Bush Administration. This document referring to the goal of transforming the military said that this “process of transformation… is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event- like a new Pearl Harbor”.
When the attacks of 9/11 occurred, they were treated like a new Pearl Harbor, so the members of the administration spoke of them as new opportunities. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared that 9/11 create “the kind of opportunities that World War II offered, to refashion the world”.
It created in particular the opportunity to attack Afghanistan and Iraq, to increase the military budget enormously, to go forward with military transformation, and to turn the new idea of pre-emptive warfare into an official doctrine. This doctrinal change was announced in a 2002 version of the national security strategy which sought that America will act against emerging threat before they are fully formed.
So not only did the Bush administration reap huge benefits from 9/11, these were benefits that it had desired in advance. The idea that it would have had no motives for orchestrating 9/11 is a Myth. But there is one more Myth that keeps many people from looking at the evidence: Myth # 3.
Myth # 3: “Such a big operation involving so many people, could not have been kept a secret because someone involved in it would have talked by now”
This claim is based on a more general myth which is that it is impossible for secret government operations to be kept secret very long because someone always talks. But how could one notice? If some big operation has remained secret until now, we by definition don’t know about them.
Moreover, we do know about some big operations that were kept secret as long as necessary; such as the “Manhattan Project” in order to create the atomic bomb, and the war in Indonesia in 1957 which the United States provoked, participated in, and then kept secret until 1995. Many more examples could be given; we can understand more why those with the inside knowledge of 9/11 would not talk. At least most of them would have been people with the proven ability to keep secrets.
Those who were directly complicit would also be highly motivated to avoid public disgrace and the gas chamber. Those people who had knowledge without being complicit, could be induced to keep quiet by means of more or less subtle threats such as: “Joe, if you go forward with your plan to talk to the press, I don’t know who is going to protect your wife and kids”.
From some nutcase angered by your statement. Still another fact is that neither the government nor the mainstream press have, to say the least shown any signs of wanting people to come forward; for all these reasons, it is not surprising that no one has.
Myth # 4: “The 9/11 Commission, which has endorsed the official account, was an independent, impartial commission and hence can be believed”
One needs only to look at the reviews of the 9/11 Commission Report on Amazon.com to see that this assumption is widely held. Perhaps this is because in the preface, the Commission’s chairman and vice chairman tell us that the 9/11 Commission sought to be “independent, impartial, thorough, unpartisan,” but these trends do not describe the reality.
The Commission’s lack of impartiality can be explained partly by the fact that the Chairman Thomas Kean and most of the other commissioners and at least half of the members of the staff had severe conflicts of interest. The most serious problem however, is that the executivee director, Philip Zelikow who is essentially a member of the Bush-Cheney administration he had worked with Condoleeza Rice on the Commission Security Counsel on the administration of the first president Bush.
Then when the Republicans were out of office, he and Condoleeza Rice wrote a book together then when she was named National Security Advisor for the second president Bush, she brought him on the help with the transition.
Finally then, he was appointed to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. So, he was the White House’s man inside the 9/11 Commission, and yet as executive director, he guided the staff which he had virtually all worked. Then Zelikow was in position therefore to decide which topics would be investigated and which ones not. One staff member reported at the time, “Zelikow was calling the shots, he was skewing the investigation and running it his own way.”
Accordingly the Commission was not independent from the Executive branch in so far as the Commission was supposed to be investigating the failure of the Bush administration to prevent the attacks, the Commission was no more independent and impartial than if Dick Cheney had been running it; the only difference was that no one was shot.
Zelikow’s ideological and personal closeness to the Bush administration is further shown by one more fact that until now has not been widely known even within the 9/11 truth movement. I mentioned earlier, the Bush administration’s national security strategy statement of 2002 in which the new doctrine of “pre-emptive warfare” was articulated, the primary author of this document, James Mann reports in “The Rise Of The Vulcans“, was non other than Philip Zelikow.
According to Mann, after Rice saw first draft which had been written by Richard Haass in the State Department, she wanted “something bolder” and brought Philip Zelikow to completely rewrite the document. The result was a document that used 9/11 to justify Zelikow’s foreign policy.
We can understand therefore, why the 9/11 Commission under Zelikow’s leadership would have ignored all the evidence that would point to the truth, that 9/11 was a false-flag operation intended to authorize the doctrines and funds needed for a new level of imperial mobilization. The suggestion that 9/11 was a false-flag operation brings us to Myth # 5.
Myth # 5: “The Bush administration provided proof that the attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda terrorists under the direction of Osama bin Laden”
One of the main pieces of the alleged proof involved the claim that the baggage of Muhammad Atta, called the ring leader was discovered at the Boston airport from which Flight 11 departed. This baggage besides containing Atta’s passport and driving license also involved various types of incriminating evidence such as flight simulator manuals, video tapes of Boeing airlines and a letter to other hijackers about preparing for the mission.
But the bags also contained Atta’s will, why would Atta have intended to take his will on the plane he had intended to take into the World Trade Center. There are also many other problems with this story we seem to have planted evidence. Another element of the official story about the plane hijackers is that they were very devout Muslims; the 9/11 Commission Report had said that Atta had become very religious even fanatically so.
The public was thereby led to believe that this man would have no problem with the suicide mission because they were ready to meet their maker. But investigator reporter, Daniel Hopsicker described that Atta had cocaine, gambling, porn, and lap dances. So many of the other alleged hijackers had the same taste, reported The Wall Street Journal.
The 9/11 Commission pretends however, that non of this information was available while admitting that Atta had met other members of Al Qaeda in Las Vegas shortly before 9/11; it says that it’s on “no credible evidence explaining why on this occasion and others, the operatives flew to or met in Las Vegas”. Another problem in the official account is that although we are told that four or five of the alleged hijackers were on each of the flights, no proof of this claim has been provided.
The story is that of course they did not force their way into the planes, but they bought tickets so their names should have been on the flight manifests, but the flight manifests that had been released contained neither the names of the alleged hijackers nor any Arab names whatsoever. We’ve also been given no proofs that the remains of any of these men were found in the wreckage.
One final little problem is that several of these nineteen men according to stories published by the BBC and the British newspapers are still alive. For example, the 9/11 Commission named Waleed al-Shehri as one of the hijackers and reproduced the FBI’s photograph of him.
It even suggested that Waleed al-Shehri stabbed one of the flight attendants shortly before Flight 11 crashed into the north tower; but as BBC news had reported 11 days after 9/11, Waleed al-Shehri having seen his photograph in newspapers and TV programs, notified authorities and journalists in Morocco where he works as a pilot that he is still alive.
But if there are various problems with the government’s story about the hijackers, surely it has proved its case about Osama bin Laden in so far as this belief is held, it is also a Myth. As the Secretary of State, Colin Powell promised shortly after 9/11 to provide a white paper giving this proof; but this paper was never produced.
The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair did produce such a paper, but it begins with the admission that “it does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama bin Laden in a court of law”. So evidence good enough to go to war, but not good enough to go to court; and although the Taliban had said that it would hand Bin Laden over if the United States provided evidence of his involvement in 9/11, Bush refused.
This failure to provide proof was later proven to be unnecessary because Bin Laden in a video allegedly found in Afghanistan, admitted responsibility for the attacks; this confession is now widely sited as proof, but the man in this video has darker skin, fuller cheeks, and a broader nose than the Osama bin Laden of all other videos.
We again seem to have planted evidence. There are moreover other problems in the official account of Osama bin Laden; for one thing in June of 2001, when he was already America’s most wanted criminal, he reportedly spent two weeks in the American hospital in Dubai, was treated by an American doctor, and visited by the local CIA agent.
Also after 9/11, when America was reportedly trying to get Osama “dead or alive” U.S military evidently allowed him to escape on at least two occasions, the last one being the battle of Tora Bora, which the London Telegraph labelled “A Grand Charade.” Shortly thereafter Bush said, “I don’t know where bin Laden is. I really don’t care. It’s not our priority”. Sometimes the truth slips out. In any case the idea that the Bush administration has provided proof for its claims about Osama bin Laden, and the Al Qaeda hijackers is a Myth.
Myth # 6: “The 9/11 attacks came as a surprise to the Bush administration”
Nothing is more essential to the official story than this idea. About ten months after 9/11, FBI director, Robert Mueller had said, “to this day we have found no one in the United States except the actual hijackers who knew of the plot”. There is much evidence however, that counts against this claim. One type of evidence involves an extraordinary high volume of put option bought just three days prior to 9/11; to buy put options for a particular company, is to have bit that its stock price would go down.
These extraordinary purchases included two and only two airlines, United and American, the two airlines used in the attacks; they also included Morgan Stanley Dean Witter which occupied twenty two stories of the World Trade Center. The price of these shares did of course plummet after 9/11 resulting in enormous profits for the purchasers; these unusual purchases as the San Francisco Chronicle said, “raise suspicions that the investors… had advance knowledge of the strikes”.
It would appear in other words that those who made the purchases knew that the United and American airliners were going to be used in attacks on the World Trade Center. The 9/11 Commission tried to show these suspicions to be unfounded; it claimed for example, that the purchases for United airlines do not show that anyone other than Al Qaeda had foreknowledge because 95% of these auctions were purchased by “a single U.S based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to Al Qaeda”.
But the 9/11 Commission thereby simply begged the question in regards to this issue, which is whether some organization other than Al Qaeda was involved in the planning. Also the 9/11 Commission ignored the other crucial point which is that the U.S intelligence agency closely monitored the stock market looking for any anomalies that might provide clues to untoward events.
Therefore, regardless of who orchestrated the attacks, the U.S government would have had intelligence suggesting that the United and American airliners would have been used for the attacks on the World Trade Center in the near future. Further evidence shown by the behaviour of president Bush and his secret service agents at the photo-op at the school in Florida that morning.
According to the official story, when Bush was first told that the plane had struck one of the twin towers, he dismissed the incident as a horrible accident which meant that they could go ahead with the photo-op; news of the second strike however, would have indicated, assuming that the news were unexpected that terrorists were using planes to attack high value targets and what could have been a higher value target than the president of the United States.
His vocation at the school had been highly publicized, therefore the secret service agents should have feared that the hijacked airliners might have been bearing the school in that very minute and ready to crash into it. It is standard procedure for the secret service to rest the president to a safe location when ever there is any sign of danger; and yet these agents allowed the president to remain another half hour at the school.
Even permitting him to deliver and address on TV, thereby announcing to the world that he was still at the school. Would not this behaviour be explainable only if the head of the secret service detail knew that the plane attacks did not include the attack on the school and the president.
The 9/11 Commission of course did not ask this question; it was content to report that the secret service told us that they did not think it imperative for the president to run out the door. Maintaining decorum in other words was more important than protecting the president’s life. Can anyone seriously believe that the highly trained secret service would act this way in a situation of genuine danger.
A third example, a pentagon spokesperson in claiming why the Pentagon was not evacuated before it was attacked, claiming that the pentagon was simply not aware that the aircraft was coming our way. The 9/11 Commission claimed that there was no warning about an unidentified aircraft heading towards Washington until 9:36 and hence only one or two minutes before the Pentagon was struck.
But this claim is contradicted by the Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta’s testimony about an episode that occurred in the Presidential Emergency Centre under the White House. In open testimony to the 9/11 Commission itself Mineta said:
“During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President that the plane is fifty miles out, the plane is thirty miles out, and when it got down to the plane is ten miles out, the young man also said to the Vice President ‘do the orders still stand?’ and the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, ‘of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary?’“
Mineta said that this conversation occurred at 9:25 or 9:26, hence many minutes before the Pentagon was struck. This example gives us one of the clearest examples that Zelikow led the 9/11 Commission and that the 9/11 Commission cannot be trusted. Having claimed that there was no knowledge that an aircraft was approaching the Pentagon until the last minute or so, it simply omitted Mineta’s testimony to the contrary.
Then to rid out the possibility that the real episode Mineta had reported could have occurred, it claimed that Cheney did not even arrive down to the Presidential Emergency Centre until almost 10:00 o’clock; hence about 20 minutes after the Pentagon was struck. But this claim, besides contradicting Mineta’s eyewitness testimony that Cheney was already there when Mineta arrived at 9: 20 also contradicts all other reports as to Cheney had already arrived there including a report by Cheney himself.
In summary, having compared the account of the official story about the put options, the secret service and Mineta’s eyewitness testimony, we can reject as a Myth that the attacks were unexpected. However, even if the attacks had been unexpected, should they not have been prevented? This brings us to Myth # 7.
Myth # 7: “U.S officials have explained why the hijacked airliners were not intercepted”
Actually there is a sense in which this claim is true, U.S officials have explained why the U.S military did not prevent the attacks; the problem however, is that they have given us three explanations; they are all mutually contradictory, and non of them is a satisfactory explanation.
I will explain…
According to standard operating procedures, if an FAA flight controller agent notices anything that suggests a possible hijacking, the controller has to contact a superior. If the problem cannot be fixed quickly within about a minute, the superior has to ask NORAD (The North American Aerospace Defense Command), have to send up or scramble jet fighters to figure out what’s going on.
Norad them issues a scramble order to the nearest air force base with fighters on alert; the jet fighters at Norad’s disposal could respond very quickly. According to the U.S air force website, F15s can go from scramble order to 2000 feet in only two and a half minutes; after which they can fly over 1800 miles an hour.
Therefore, according to General Ralph Eberhart, the head of NORAD, after the FAA senses that something is wrong “it takes about a minute” for it to contact NORAD after which according to a spokesperson, NORAD can scramble fighter jets “within a matter of minutes to anywhere in the United States.”
An air force travel control document put out in 1998, warning pilots that “any airplane persisting in unusual behaviour will likely find two [jetfighters] on their tail within 10 or so minutes.”
If these procedures had been carried out on the morning of 9/11, American airlines flight 11 and United airline flight 175, would have been intercepted before they could reach Manhattan; and the American flight 77 would have been intercepted long before it could reach the Pentagon. Such interceptions are routine being carried out about a hundred times a year; a month after 9/11 the Calgary Herald reported that “in the year 2000, NORAD had scrambled fighters 129 times.”
Do these scrambles often result in interceptions? Just a few days after 9/11, Major Mike Snyder, the NORAD spokesperson told the Boston Globe that “[Norad] fighters routinely intercept aircraft.”
Why did not such interceptions occur on 9/11?
During the first few days, the public was told that during 9/11 no fighter jets were set up until after the strike on the Pentagon at 9: 38. However, it was also reported that signs of Flight 11 hijacking had been observed at 8:15; that would mean that although interceptions usually occur within ten or so minutes after signs of trouble are observed, in this case, 80 or so minutes had passed before fighters were even airborne.
This story suggest that a stand down order had been given; within a few days however, a second story was put out according to which NORAD had sent fighters up but because notification from FAA had been very tardy, the fighters arrived too late. On September, 18th NORAD made this second story official embodying it in a timeline which indicated when NORAD had been notified by the FAA about each airplane and who and when it had scrambled fighters in response.
Critics quickly showed however, that even if the FAA notifications had come as late as NORAD’s timeline indicated, NORAD’s jets would have had time to make interceptions. The second story did not therefore, remove the suspicion that a stand down order had been given; hoping to overcome this problem, the 9/11 Commission report provided a third account according to which contrary to NORAD’s timeline of September 18, the FAA did not notify NORAD about Flight 175 after it had struck the South Tower or about Flight 77 until after it had stuck the Pentagon.
But there are three big problems with this third story.
One problem is the very fact that it is the third story; normally when a suspect in a criminal investigation keeps changing his story, we get suspicious. Let’s say that the police asked Charlie Jones where he was on the night of a particular crime, he says he was at the movie theatre, but they say no the movie theatres have been closed all week.
Oh Charlie says “That’s right! I was with my girlfriend.”; the police say, “No, we checked with her and she was home with her husband!” At that point Charlie says “Oh now I remember, I was home reading the Bible.” You’re probably not going to believe Charlie, and yet that’s what we have here. The military told one story after 9/11, another story two weeks later and a third through the 9/11 Commission report in 2004.
Second problem with this third story is that it contradicts several features of the second story which had served as the official story for almost three years. For example, NORAD’s timeline had indicated that the FAA had notified it about Flight 175, 20 minutes before the South Tower was struck, and notified it about Flight 77 at least 14 minutes before the Pentagon was struck.
The 9/11 Commission maintains that both of these statements were “incorrect” that really there had been no notification and that NORAD did not know about these flights until after they had hit the targets; this was why the military failed to intercept them. But if NORAD’s timeline was false, as the Commission now claims, NORAD must have been lying or confused. But it’s hard to believe that it could have been confused one week after 9/11; so it must have been lying.
But if NORAD was lying then, why should we believe them now?
Further skepticism about this story arises from the fact that it is contradicted by considerable evidence. For example the Commission’s claim that the military did not know about Flight 175 until it reached its goal, is contradicted by Captain Michael Jeleneck who on 9/11 was overseeing NORAD’s headquarters in Colorado.
According to a story on Toronto Star, Jeleneck was on the phone with NORAD as he watched Flight 175 crash into the South Tower; he then asked NORAD, “Was that the hijacked aircraft you were dealing with?” To which NORAD said, “Yes.”
The 9/11 Commission’s claims about Flights 175 and 77 are also contracted by a memo sent to the Commission by Laura Brown of the FAA; her memo stated that the FAA had set up a teleconference at about 8:50 that morning at which time it had started to share information about all flights with the military. She specifically mentioned Flight 77; her memo which is available on the web was discussed by the 9/11Commission and read into its record on May 22, 2003.
But Zelikow’s 9/11 Commission report fails to mention this memo.
Because of these and still more problems which I have discussed in a lecture called “9/11 Flights of Fancy Truth and Politics,” this third story does not remove the grounds for suspicion that a stand down order had been given. There is moreover ear witness testimony for this suspicion; an upper man official in LAX airport who needs to remain anonymous, told me that he overheard members of LAX security including officers of FBI and the LAPD interacting on their walky-talky shortly after the attacks.
In some cases he could hear both sides of the conversation; at first the LAX officials were furious because they were told that the airplanes that had attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had not be intercepted because the FAA had not notified NORAD about the hijackings. But later he reports that they were even more furious because they were told that NORAD had been notified, but it did not respond because it had been ordered to stand down.
When the LAX security official asked who had issued that order, they were told that it had came from the highest level of the White House; that of course would mean Cheney. Accordingly, the idea that the attacks could not have been prevented is a Myth.
Myth # 8: “Official reports have explained why the Twin Towers and Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed”
This claim suffers from the same problem as the previous one which has three explanations each of which contradicts the others and non of which is anywhere near adequate.
The first explanation: while widely disseminated through television specials that the buildings collapsed because the columns were melted by the jet fuel fire; but this explanation contains many problems, the most obvious of which is that steel does not begin to melt until about 2800 degrees Fahrenheit while open fire is consisted of hydrocarbons such as kerosene, which is what jet fuel is, cannot even under the most ideal circumstances rise above 1700 degrees.
A second explanation endorsed by the 9/11 Commission report is the “pancake” theory according to which the fires while not melting the steel, heated them up sufficiently enough to cause the floors weaken by the air strikes to break loose from the steel columns both those in the core and those around the outside. All the floors above the strike zone hence fell down on the floors bellow the strike zone causing it to break free and therefore started a chain reaction so that the floors pancaked all the way down.
But this explanation also suffered from many problems; the most obvious of which was that it could not explain why the buildings collapsed into a pile of rubble only a few stories high. The core of each of the Twin Towers was consisted of massive steel columns; if the floors had broken loose from them, these columns would still have been sticking up in the air a thousand feet. The 9/11 Commission Report tried to cover up this problem by claiming that the core of each tower consisted of “a hollow steel shaft.” But those massive steel columns could not be wished away.
The definitive explanation was supposed to be a third one issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology usually called [NIST]. The NIST report claimed that when the floors collapsed, they rather than breaking free from the columns pulled on them causing the perimeter columns to become unstable. This instability then increased the gravity load on the core columns which had been weakened by tremendously hot fires in the core which in this claim reached over 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, and this combination of factors resulted in global collapse.
But as physicists John Hoffman and Steven Jones have shown this account is riddled with problems. One is that NIST’s claim about the tremendously hot fires in the core is completely unsupported by the evidence or logic.
The second problem is that even if this sequence of events had occurred, NIST provided no explanation as to why it would have resulted in global that is total collapse. The NIST report asserts that column failure occurred in the core as well as the perimeter columns, but this remains a bare assertion.
There is no plausible explanation why the core columns would have broken or even buckled so as to produce global collapse, and this is only to begin to innumerate the problems in NIST theory all of which follow from the fact that it like the previous two theories is essentially a fire theory according to which the buildings were brought down primarily by fire. In the case of the Twin Towers of course the impact of the airplanes is said to have played a role, but most experts who support the official theory attribute the collapses primarily to the fire.
NIST for example says that the main contribution of the airplanes aside from providing jet fuel, was to dislodge a lot of the fire proofing from the steel thereby making it vulnerable to the fires. (By the way when you go home tonight and light your fire in the fireplace be sure to fireproof your steel or the great may collapse!). These fire theories face several formidable problems.
First the fires in these three buildings were not very hot, very big or very long lasting compared to the flames in some steel framed high risers that did not collapse. The 1991 fire in Philadelphia burned 18 hours, and a 2004 fire in Caracas burned for 17 hours without causing even a partial collapse. In contrast, the fires in the North and South Towers burned only for 102 and 56 minutes respectively before they collapsed and neither fire unlike the Philadelphia and the Caracas fires were hot enough to break windows.
Second, total collapses in steel framed high rise buildings have never either before or after 9/11 been brought down by fire alone or fire plus externally caused structural damage. The collapse of building 7 has been recognized as specially difficult to explain; it was not hit by a plane so the explanation has to rely solely on fire and yet because there was no jet fuel to get a big fire started, this building only had fires on two or three floors according to several witnesses and all photographic evidence.
FEMA admitted that the best theory it could come up with in this collapse had “only a low probability of occurrence.” The 9/11 Commission report implicitly admitted that it could not explain the collapse of this building by not even mentioning it. In this report which could not claim that even fire proofing had gotten knocked off the steel of this building, has yet to offer an explanation as to why it collapsed; and NIST like the 9/11 Commission evidently does not want you asking why building 7 collapsed even though it was not hit by a plane.
On its website it says that one of its objectives is to determine “why and how World Trade Center building 1, 2, and 7 collapsed after the initial impact of the aircraft.” Thereby implying that building 7, like the Twin Towers was also hit by a plane.
In any case, the third problem with the official account of the collapses of these three buildings is that all prior and subsequent collapses, total collapses of steel framed high risers have been caused by explosives and the procedure known as “controlled demolition.” This problem is made even more severe by the fact that the collapses of these three buildings manifested many features of the most difficult type of demolition, known as “implosion.” I will mention seven of such features:
- First the collapses began suddenly: Steel, if weakened by fire would gradually begin to sag, but as one can see from videos available on the web, all three buildings are completely motionless up to the moment they begin to collapse.
- Second, if these huge buildings had began to topple over, they would have caused an enormous amount of death and destruction over Manhattan, but they came straight down. The straight down collapse is the whole point of Controlled Implosion which only a few companies in the world are qualified enough to pull off.
- Third, these buildings collapsed at virtually free-fall speed which means that the lower floors which were all steel and concrete were offering virtually no resistance.
- Fourth, as mentioned earlier, these collapses were total collapses resulting in piles of rubble only a few storeys high; this means that the enormous steel columns at the core of each building had to be broken into rather short segments which is what explosives do.
- Fifth, great quantities of molten steel were produced which means that the steel had been heated up to several thousand degrees, and witnesses during the cleanup reported that sometimes a piece of steel was lifted out of the rubble, there was dripping molten metal.
- Sixth, according to many fire-fighters, medical workers, journalists, and World Trade Centre employees, many explosions went off both before and during the collapses. For example, fire Captain Denis Tardiel speaking of the South Tower said, “I hear an explosion and look up. It is as if the building is being imploded, from the top floor down, one after another, boom, boom, boom.” Fire-fighter Richard Minisinsky said when they were blowing up these buildings, “it seemed like on television [when] they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions.”
Thanks to the release in August of 2005 of the oral histories recorded by the Fire Department of New York shortly after 9/11. Dozens of testimonies of this type are now available; I’ve published an essay on them which is included in the forthcoming book on 9/11 and Christian faith along with a lecture on the destruction of the World Trade Center which I am now summarizing.
- A seventh feature of the Controlled Implosion is the production of large quantities of dust. In the case of the Twin Towers, virtually everything the steel, the concrete, the computers, the desks, was pulverized into very tiny dust particles.
The official story cannot explain one let alone all seven of these features at least as Hoffman and Jones point out without violating several basic laws of physics; but the Controlled Demolition theory easily explains all of these features. These findings are inconsistent with the idea that Al Qaeda terrorists were responsible. Foreign terrorists could not have gotten access to those buildings for all the hours it would have taken to plant the explosives.
Also, Al Qaeda terrorists would probably not have the courtesy to make sure that the buildings came straight down rather than toppling over. Terrorists working for the Bush-Cheney administration by contrast could have gotten such access especially given the fact that Marvin Bush and Wirt Walker III, the president’s brother and cousin respectively were presidents of the company in charge of the security for the World Trade Center.
Another relevant fact was that the evidence was destroyed; an examination of the building steel beams and columns could have shown to explain whether explosives had been used to slice them, but virtually all the steel was removed before it could be properly investigated; then put on ships to Asia to be melted down. It is usually a federal offence to remove anything from a crime scene even a match book.
But here over a hundred tons of steel, the biggest destruction evidence in history was carried out under the supervision of federal officials. Evidence was also evidently planted; the passport of one of the hijackers on Flight 11 was allegedly found in the rubble.
The passport not only survived the fiery infernal caused by the airplane, but also everything else in these buildings to be pulverized into tiny dust; the magic passport.
To sum up, the idea that U.S officials have given a satisfactory or even close to satisfactory explanation of the collapse of the World Trade Center is a Myth; these officials have implicitly admitted this by refusing to engage in rational debate about it. Michael Newman, a spokesman for NIST repeatedly said during a recent interview that “non of the NIST scientists would participate in any public debate with scientists who reject their report.”
When Newman would has why NIST would avoid public debate if it had confidence in its report, he replied “because there is no winning in such debates.” In the same interview, Newman had compared people who reject the government’s account of the collapses with people who believe in Big Foot and a flat earth; and yet he fears that his scientists would not be able to show these fools in a public debate. In any case, I come now to the final Myth which is Myth # 9.
Myth # 9: “There is no doubt that Flight 77, under the control of Al Qaeda hijacker Hani Hanjour, struck the Pentagon”
There are in fact many reasons to doubt this claim. We have in the first place reasons to doubt that the aircraft that hit the Pentagon was under the control of Hani Hanjour. For one thing the aircraft before hitting the Pentagon, repeatedly executed a 270 degree downward spiral and yet Hani Hanjour was known as a terrible pilot who could not safely fly even a small plane.
Wes Wittenberg who flew commercial airplanes for 31 years, after serving in Vietnam as a fighter pilot says that it would have been “totally impossible for an amateur who couldn’t even fly a Cessna to maneuver the jetliner in such a highly professional manner.” Moreover, as a result of that very difficult maneuver, the Pentagon’s West wing was struck, but a terrorist brilliant enough to get through the U.S military’s defense system would have known that this was the worst place to strike for several reasons:
The West wing was reinforced so that the damage was less severe than the strike anywhere else would have been; this wing was still being renovated, so relatively fewer people were there. A strike anywhere else would have killed thousands rather than 125. And the Secretary of Defense and all the top staff who a terrorist would have presumably wanted to kill were on the East wing.
Why would an Al Qaeda fighter have executed a very difficult maneuver to hit the West wing, when he could have simply crashed into the roof of the East wing?
Here is the second major problem with the official story. There are reasons to believe that the Pentagon was struck only because the officials at the Pentagon wanted it to be stuck. For one thing, Flight 77 allegedly after making a U turn in the Midwest, flew back to Washington undetected for 40 minutes, and yet the U.S military which by then clearly would have known that hijacked airliners were being used as weapons, has the best radar system in world one of which it brags, “does not miss anything occurring in North American airspace.”
The idea that a large airliner could have slipped through is absurd. Also the Pentagon is surely the best defended building on the planet; it is not only within the P56 restricted aerospace that extends 17 miles in every direction from the Washington monument, but also in the P56B aerospace the three mile ultra-restricted zone within the White House, Capitol, and the Pentagon.
The Pentagon is only a few miles from Andrew’s air force base which has at least three squadrons with fighter jets on alert at all times. The claim by the 9/11 Commission report that no fighters were on alert the morning of 9/11 is wholly implausible, as I have explained in my book on this subject. The Pentagon moreover is reportedly protected by batteries of surfaced air missiles, so if any aircraft without a U.S military transponder would enter the Pentagon’s aerospace, it would shot down.
So even if the aircraft had hit the Pentagon with Flight 77, it could have succeeded only because the officials in the Pentagon turned off their missiles as well as ordering the fighters from Andrew’s to stand down.
A third major problem with the official story is that there is considerable evidence that it could not have been Flight 77 because it was not a Boeing 757. For one thing, the strike on the Pentagon unlike the strikes on the Twin Towers did not create a detectable signal.
Also according to several witnesses and many people who have studied the available photographs, both the damage and the degree were inconsistent with the strike by a large airliner; that issue however, is too complex to discuss here, as is the issue of what should be inferred from conflicting eyewitness testimony.
Deferring those topics to another time, I will conclude by pointing out that the suspicion that the Pentagon was struck by a 757 as the government claims, is supported by the fact that evidence was destroyed. Shortly after the strike, government agents picked up debris and carried it off. Shortly thereafter, the entire lawn was covered with dirt and gravel so that any remaining forensic evidence was literally covered up.
Also the videos from security cameras on the nearby Sitco gas station and the Sheraton Hotel which would show what really hit the Pentagon, were immediately confiscated by agents of the FBI, and the Department of Justice has to this day refused to release them. If these videos would prove that the Pentagon was really hit by a 757, most of us would assume that the government would release them.
To conclude, it would seem for many reasons, that the official story of 9/11 which has served as a religious Myth in the intervening years is a Myth in the pejorative sense of the story that does not correspond with reality.
Extracted from the full feature documentary “9/11: The Myth and The Reality exposes the official story of 9/11 for what it truly is: a sacred myth” which recorded the live speeches of Philosopher and Theologist Dr. David Ray Griffin at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco (4/3/06) and at The Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (3/30/06), USA.
About David Ray Griffin
David Ray Griffin (born 1939) is a retired professor of philosophy of religion and theology and a proponent of alternative 9/11 conspiracy theories that implicate members of the United States government in the attacks. Along with John B. Cobb, Jr. he is considered a foundational thinker in Process theology.
Since his retirement, he has moved his focus from questions of philosophy and religion to one of politics and, specifically, questioning the 9/11 attacks. His recent work includes the book, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9-11 (2004) and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, books in which he argues there is evidence members of the United States government were behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, and Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action in which he summarizes some of what he believes is evidence for government complicity and reflects on its implications for Christians.
To purchase a copy of the original video by Prof. David Ray Griffin please contact Infowars.com
